To say that I was disoriented when I woke up the next morning, alone in a strange bed, would be a severe understatement.

At first, I could not recognize where I was and frankly panicked a little bit. Only after a few moments, I remembered what had happened the last night, and calmed down somewhat. But that still left the fact that I had absolutely no clue what exactly had happened.

Oh, sure, I knew the mechanical and even the biological bits, but I could not work out why. But brooding over it did not serve anything, and I had other pressing needs. After a little bit of looking, I found the bathroom and soon had taken care of my business.

The shower enticed me with its sirens song, as I was in desperate need of some cleaning up, and surprisingly there were care products tailored for female needs available, even if they were unopened, as well as a brand new toothbrush.

Apparently, somebody had planned ahead. I did not hesitate to make use of them, while still wondering how I had ended up in Walker’s bed.

When I tried to put on my clothes, I found them missing. Instead, there was an emerald green bathrobe made from spider silk. I was pretty sure that it was intended for me, as it was my size and Walker would look pretty stupid in it.

All in all, I was somewhat bewildered.

When I left the bedroom I found Walker sitting at a table in the antechamber, reading a tablet and drinking some coffee, and when he heard the door he looked up, smiling at me.

“Good morning. Did you had a good sleep?”

He pointed at the chair opposite from him, and I sat down, finding another cup.

“Good morning. And yes?”

He looked at me and frowned.

“Why the question? Is something wrong?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“I am confused.”

His frown intensified.

“Confused? About what?”

Closing my eyes I shook my head.

“About what happened yesterday evening.”

Now he looked confused as well.

“Uhm, we moved our relationship to the next level?”

And just like that, my confusion intensified.

“We… had a relationship?”

Now his frown was back.

“Yes, of course. Why do you think I flirted so much with you?”

He did what ?!?

“You… did?”

He just looked at me for a few moments.

“Yes… of course. If you were unsure, why did you flirt back?”

I felt my yaw drop down.

“I… I did?” Now I felt more unsure than ever. Something was deeply wrong here.

Again we looked at each other in silence for a few moments, before he spoke again.

“You are not fucking with me?”

I shook my head again.

“No. Why would I?”

“As a bit of a payback for my fun yesterday.”

I could only look at him, canting my head. It seemed as if my confusion was pretty apparent, as he sounded unsure himself when he continued.

“You really had no idea about what was happening?”

I nodded slowly.

“You were taken by surprise?”

Again, I nodded, and he groaned, placing his face in his hand.

“And I played my game yesterday, trying to get one over you. Shit, you must have been in a real panic! Fuck, that is so… fucked up.”

I was just relieved that he meant that revelation more playful. It seemed so to me at least. He looked back at me.

“Fuck, Kitten, I am sorry. I really thought you were… aware of what is happening. I mean, shit, how did you react to my, well, courting?”

“I don’t know. I… honestly, I did not even realize it.”

He groaned again.

“Fuck, and now?”

I thought for a moment before I answered.

“I don’t know.”

He looked sharp at me.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I have absolutely no clue about what I feel. That is why I am so confused.”

“And what about last night?”

“That is the problem, I have absolutely no context about what happened. I… I’ve never experienced something like that. I can’t say what it was, what it is, what it means. I am just confused.”

His eyes narrowed again a bit.

“But you were not a virgin, right?”

I just looked at him, raising my right eyebrow, and I saw the penny drop.

“Oh, right. Frankel! Of course, you were not a virgin after falling into his clutches.”

“I was no virgin before I fell into his clutches. I mean, I had sex before. I even had orgasms before, just not at the same time. But… nothing like last night. The few… encounters I had were more akin to a chore, and frankly, I had given up on sex being anything good.”

He nodded slowly.

“And that means what exactly?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I just don’t have any experience with things like that. I… I am not particularly good at relationship stuff. Sorry.”

“And what will happen between us now?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I… don’t know what to say. I mean, yes, the sex was… I lack the words to describe it, and honestly, I like you and respect you. But I have no clue what that means.”

He nodded again.

“I understand. Then I will have to teach you what it means, don’t I?”

It was my time to groan.

“Mr…” I stopped when he lifted an eyebrow, and he interjected then.

“I think we are way beyond ‘Mr.’ don’t you?”

I just rolled my eyes and sighed.

“You tell me. I never had any relationship. After school, I barely had any contact with other people outside of the matrix. Until I came to New York that is. I think the best term to describe me is ‘shut in’.”

A faint smile returned to his face.

“I understand. Well, Kitten, then call me Ben.”

I shrugged.

“Ok, if that is the right thing, what I was trying to say is that I have spent over a hundred virtual years without any significant human interaction. I honestly don’t know if I even can have a relationship at this point anymore.”

His face hardened, and he let the silence linger for a bit.

“I understand. And to be frank, while I understand that you are in a rut in this respect, what you seem to miss is that you already increased your interaction by several orders of magnitude. You are on the right way, and we will just have to push you over the hump.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“And I will not give you up that easy. Trust me, we will get you over the hump. If you decide that you rather not be in a relationship with me, well, I will have to accept it, but I will not accept an ‘I don’t know’ as a reason to withdraw. So you just will have to live with it until you do know.”

Again we had a moment of silence.

“Ok. I can accept that I think. As long as you understand that I am… well, socially impaired. So go slow please.”

“I will.” He reassured me. “It is at least promising that we are compatible in the bed and that you like me. We can build onto that.”

I just shrugged and poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot in the middle of the table. The smell was surprisingly good, and I found that the creamer was actually real cream.

He took a sip from his cup and then spoke again.

“Now to change the topic, while I am sorry that I ambushed you yesterday in that manner, there is one big question that I could not find the answer to. Why did you run from Nowhere?

I mean, yes, you were essentially a petty criminal, but a useful one, at least in their eyes. They knew about C-Dot for a couple of years now and knew the whole time where to find you. That was the only thing that could give you trouble. They did not know about Seraphim, and even less about Spectre. So why did you run?”

I swallowed again and took a deep breath before I answered in a small voice.

“I am a K4.”

His confusion was evident, and for several seconds it was pretty obvious that he tried to make sense of that statement. Then he gave up.

“Ok, I bite. What is ‘a K4’?”

“Oh, right. Here nobody instantly recognizes what that means. Have you ever heard about ‘Project Revitalize’?”

He nodded.

“Yes, vaguely. It is some harebrained scheme to increase the birthrate or something like that.”

I nodded.

“It is a project to combat the effect of Sullivans´’s Folly, right, but it is anything but harebrained. Sure, the best it can do at the moment is to increase the chance of pregnancy by around 50%. But that means that instead of one of three couples getting a child it is half of them. Together with cloning, it is the reason why the Commonwealth has a less severe shrinking rate than other nations.

But the important thing is that a certain percentage of couples are used to test new processes and drugs, to find better methods.

The test groups and the methods are called batches, and a batch consists of a letter and a number. The letter roughly represents the time period when the batch was first tested, while the number represents the order inside the period.

The most successful batch so far is C3 with the aforementioned roughly 50% increase.

Now K4 is… a FUBAR. At first, it seemed like the most successful batch ever. Of the 11232 couples partaking, there were an unheard 8317 pregnancies. But then it went off the rails.

During the pregnancies, there were 2062 miscarriages. Leaving 6255 births. Still a better number than C3, but not significantly so.

Sadly, of these 6255 births, 4008 were stillbirths, leaving 2247 live children. Of these, only 933 survived the first year.

At that point, it was already decided that they would not continue K4, but they finished it. I am the youngest K4, the last born.

But it did not end there. It was soon apparent that K4 led to severe birth defects. Every single child was… small and weak. Considering that most of the couples followed the general trend of the Pures to go for bigger and stronger in their partner selection, in most cases that meant that the K4 are comparable to an average ‘mongrel’, if you forgive me the use of that label. Still, in the eyes of the Pures, they are sick little weaklings.

My family on the other hand selected more for brains instead of brawn, and most of my ancestors are on the smaller side. Which hit me doubly hard. In the eyes of the Pures, I am a midget.

And it did not stop there. A few years later it showed that virtually all K4 also had mental defects. With a minuscule number of exceptions, they never developed beyond 3rd of 4th year mentally.

There are exactly 12 exceptions to that. And I hope it is clear that I am one of them. For us 12, it was actually the opposite in the mental department. Every single one of us can be seen as an exceptional genius. Not one of us has an IQ below 300 but that came out quite a bit later.”

Ben listened to my exposition, nodding now and then.

“So, you are an uber genius? What surprising news.”

Oh wow, the sarcasm was strong in this one.

“I don’t think you understand what that means. An IQ of 300 is virtually unheard of. In the history of Mankind, there were only four people who maybe had an IQ above 300, and that was before the IQ shift after the release of the Nephilim virus. And only one of them was confirmed. Now there are 12 above 300, all within five years of each other.

That was a significant find, and every single one of them, except me, got an ‘invitation’ to work for one megacorp or the other. For some arcane reason, not one of them declined this invitation.”

He nodded again.

“Ok, I get that. But where are you on that spectrum?”

I shook my head and sighed.

“I am off the scale,” I answered him softly.

“Yeah, I get that, but I want to know what your IQ is anyway.”

I groaned.

“I wasn’t being coy. I am literally off the scale. I don’t know my IQ.”

Oh, look he was confused again.

“How… I thought Nowhere had these super special ultra-high IQ tests. How can you not know your IQ?”

I took a deep sip of my coffee and then answered.

“Do you know how IQ tests work?”

He just shrugged.

“You answer some questions and get a result.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“It is a tiny bit more complicated. A good IQ test consists of several logic puzzles, and the result comes from a combination of the right answers and the time it took to answer.

The problem is, at a certain point, small… distractions, like a sneeze, an itch, or whatever have a disproportionate effect on the result, making the upper range of the test an estimate.

Then there is the cutoff. At some point, the designer of the test thinks that nobody can answer the questions even faster and sets that as the upper limit. Anything above that limit will be categorized as the limit.

The three ultra-high IQ tests become imprecise at around 350 and cut off at 400. The highest of the other 11 fluctuates between 355 and 370, and that was seen as good enough.

When I took these IQ tests, in secret, of course, they did not fluctuate. Every single one gave me the result of 400.”

He seemed to be a bit surprised now.

“Oh wow, so you have an IQ of 400?”

I scoffed and shook my head.

“Nope. Remember the cut-off is 400. If I had an IQ of 400 then at least one of these tests would have had a result of less than 400, thanks to the imprecise results after 350. In other words, I almost certainly have an IQ somewhere beyond 400, but no idea how high.”

He leaned back into his chair and looked at me for a few long moments.

“Shit. That is, sorry, but I am beyond words right now.”

He shook his head and took some deep breaths.

“But to get back to the topic, you fled to get away from being ‘invited’ to work for one of the megacorps? I can somewhat understand that. But it would be an easier life.”

“A life in a golden cage. Researching what the corp wants you to research, being sequestered in some secret laboratory or another, never being free to just be alone, or do what you want, having no friends, because the corp decides who you interact with. That is no life.

But that is not even the worst part of being a K4. Remember that there are 921, let’s call them non-functional K4. They are mentally on the level of a three- or four-year-old, but they have the same hormones and urges as other young people. And the government of Nowhere did keep them in an institution together but did not care further for them.

Until most of the girls became pregnant shortly after reaching puberty. It was a… surprise, I can tell you that. It seems K4 are significantly more fertile than the people before Sullivans Folly. And as came out later, we seem to be interfertile with non-K4, as many of the males impregnated female staff of the institutions, and not a few of the females were impregnated by the male staff.

At first, the Council was ecstatic, but it turned out that the children inherited the… well disabilities of the K4 parent. They had the same developmental disorder as the original K4. But when one of the male functional K4 had a fling and impregnated his girlfriend, the child showed to be roughly as intelligent as the father.

You can guess that the functional K4 are now also seen as breeding stock. Another thing I wanted to avoid.”

He got a thoughtful expression.

“That is… is there a chance that you are pregnant? I have to say that while I actually would like that, I don’t think we are at the level right now.”

I shook my head.

“No, there is no problem here. I used nanobots to stop my cycle. For one, it removes that inconvenience of the monthly visitor, and, while I had mostly given up on sex, in our world today, involuntary participation in sexual activity is mostly a matter of when, and not if, sad as it is.”

He nodded but remained thoughtful.

“Hm, that is… well good I presume.”

Then he stopped and his eyes widened.

“Do you think it strange that I am somehow disappointed right now?”

I leaned back into my chair, a bit affronted for a moment, before I realized his position. Yes, he had a clone-son, but humans still had that niggling imperative to procreate, and I shrugged.

“No, I don’t think it is strange. But for the time being, I think we should shelf that idea.”

He nodded again.

“Yes, as I said, we are not in the position to think about that.”

“I agree. But back to the topic, even that is not the worst thing about being a functional K4, if you believe me.”

Now he looked questioning at me.

“Then it must be pretty bad. I mean, yeah, from my point of view, that is actually a nice thing, but I can see that it is pretty bad for you.”

I nodded.

“It is. Remember, I am the youngest K4. There are many that are around 24 years old. But around three years ago, during a routine examination, the doctors realized that not one of the K4 looked older than mid to late teens. In-depth examination showed that something was wrong with our biological clock.

Our telomeres don’t get shorter and we have significantly increased genetical and cellular repair functions. Heck, Panacea even tested what happens if we lose body parts by cutting off toes from a few of the nonfunctional K4. They slowly regenerated.”

Ben just lifted an eyebrow and looked at me for some long moments. Then he finally reacted verbally.

“Does that mean what I think it means?”

I snorted.

“If you think that it seems as if we are biologically immortal, then yes, that is what it means. In other words, as a functional K4, if known, I had the choice of being an obedient little broodmare and research bot for some big corp, or a rebellious little broodmare and a research subject for the selfsame corp. I hope you understand why I decided I did not like either of these choices.”

He nodded.

“Oh yes, I understand. But that poses another question. Why now? I mean, if you managed to fly under the radar for 18 years, why did you run now?”

I grimaced.

“A perfect storm. For my 18th birthday, the government made the final evaluation. For that, I had to, let's say influence their processes a bit. Otherwise, it would have come out that I am a K4.

But I could not keep the changes in the system, or they would have at some point become suspicious and looked into anybody that could have been the reason for the changes.

So a couple of days after my 18th I entered their system again to remove the changes.

It had to be my luck that just as I was reversing the influences, some idiot noob jack decided to brute force the ministry of the interior system, predictably crashing it.

We both were hit by the active defenses of the system, and while he fried, I was knocked silly for three days. When I came too, Seattle was in chaos.

The first thing the ministry did when they found my modifications was exactly what I tried to prevent. They looked into the files that were influenced by them and sent out peacekeepers to detain the subjects of these files.

Fortunately for me, I was not so stupid and hang out in my apartment or my ‘official secret’ hangout. And I was even smart enough to prepare a few even more ‘secret’ boltholes that had been ‘found out’ by the peacekeepers.

And that was the second part of the perfect storm, as one of the boltholes was a tiny bit inside the territory of the Deathlords.”

He facepalmed and groaned.

“And that kicked off the riots. Fuck that was a string of bad luck. But why did you not lay low and tried it again later?”

I sighed.

“Two reasons. All real boltholes that I had prepared were now smack dab in the middle of a warzone. There was no chance for me to get there.

But more important is that the Commonwealth realized early on that they would never achieve absolute data security. And their solution to that was that every couple of months they create a complete offline copy of their whole data, completely inaccessible from the net at a secret location. Rumor says that they even put it on plasfilm.

Naturally, the verification of the files is hideously manpower intensive, so they only do it in special cases. But if something arouses their suspicion they will find out. It will take decades before the Commonwealth is safe for me again.

That by the way is why you actually found my real information and likeness in their files. I had it changed, but they corrected it when they verified the information. And of course, they found all the small corrections I made over the years to hide me being a K4.”

I laughed bitterly for a moment.

“And here I had sandbagged them since I was eight just to remain under their radar, and it all crumbles on the finish line.

If that asshole had his joy dive just a minute later, I would have been scot-free.”